Category: Published Articles

Article first published in Spirito di Vino Issue #26. Image: David Reist. It is a brilliantly sunny day in Melbourne as I head towards one of the city’s essentials for any wine lover, the City Wine Shop. I am meeting Tim Kirk of Clonakilla Wines upstairs in the Supper Club before he leads a dinner at the […]

Article first published Wine Times Hong Kong, February 3 2017. After two weeks in Chile my study trip continued over the Andes in Mendoza, Argentina, where I visited Altos Las Hormigas and Familia Zuccardi. What was immediately apparent upon entering Argentina was the vast difference in infrastructure between Chile and Argentina and how lengthy periods […]

Edited and republished for The Drinks Business, 16 December 2016. The Itata Valley in the Bio Bio region has for many years been somewhat of an afterthought when it comes to the wine regions of Chile. At times occupying no more than a few sentences in many texts on Chilean wine production this is at […]

Written for Spirito di Vino Asia Issue #24. Image: Redfish Bluefish Photographic. Driving into Healesville, the town around which Australia’s Yarra Valley is centred, I am due for an early morning meeting with Steve Flamsteed, before his day starts to fill up with the duties of Head Winemaker and now part owner of Giant Steps. […]

Published The Drinks Business, 20 June 2016. Image: S. C. Pannell cellar door in McLaren Vale. Image credit: Richard Lyons. To kick-start the month of June Cellarhand distributors held a tasting with McLaren Vale winemaker Stephen Pannell of the eponymous label S. C. Pannell. We were treated to an extensive representation of wines under this label, […]

Published The Drinks Business, 22 April 2016. Trade is at the very heart of the Bordeaux region in France and just to the north of the city of Bordeaux is the home of Cognac, one of France’s most well known brandies – the other coming from Armagnac, to the south of Bordeaux. For centuries trade has […]

Published The Drinks Business, 7 April 2016. Maurice O’Shea. Credit: Mount Pleasant Wines. The art of blending and the ability to assess individual parts, commit them to memory and create a vast library of aromas, flavours and structures from which to draw on at a point in the future is a unique talent. It is one […]